Freedom from Sin
The first step in experiencing holy joy and reveling in the various freedoms afforded by salvation consists of recognizing and then capitalizing on the greatest news anyone can ever receive–that being: we live in the unthinkably wonderful reality in which God saw fit to come down to us in the flesh, live the perfect life we could not, die a torturous and humiliating death at the hands of the very people He had come to save (and thereby offer the means of forgiveness and eternal life to them), and then rise from the dead in the most seismic and cosmically significant event humanity has ever recorded.
This wondrous event, of course, signifies that our deaths have been conquered as well, and that is only one of many blessings it allots to us. Indeed, it is the source of all the corollary elements of holy joy, such that the entirety of this series will be made up of all these blessings which we ultimately derive from the salvation of Jesus Christ.
But it is difficult, if not impossible, to bask in, say, our freedom from death, or our freedom to enjoy the presence of our relational Creator, or revel with a John Piper-esque spiritual hedonism in any of the other liberties Christ has granted us if we do not first taste the sweetness of–and then drink greedily and deeply–perhaps the most basic and initially most obvious salvific freedom. I am talking about our freedom in Christ from our sin.
Already, I feel as if I am failing to do this freedom justice because of how I have labeled it. I sense that calling it “freedom from sin” is far too clinical. While some occasions call for cold detachment and pithy statements of logic in order to best communicate, others require tapping into the emotionally torrential depths of the heart if one intends to send a proper message. And any subject relating to holy joy, the most visceral and captivating of all human states, likely demands the latter.
With that said, this most basic element of holy joy is more exhaustively described as “the freedom to live freely from the suffocating burden of your past and your sin, which, if you are upfront with yourself, is chock-full of deceit, envy, malice, sexual perversion, indecency, hatred, and every form of moral ugliness known to man.”
In Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Jacob Marley is both weighed down by and hopelessly entangled within an intricate system of chains, which are themselves attached to a seemingly endless supply of heavy money boxes. The idea is that the loathsome specter accumulated this eternal burden through the sins of greed he committed in life. If we take Mr. Dickens’ creative illustration of chains and apply it to our own reality, then the sin-burden from which Jesus set us free boasted a much more elaborate network of chains and a series of weights far more grotesque than metal containers full of cash (you may fill in the blanks with all the unsavory and macabre details from your life so this illustration may take full effect).
This freedom Christ affords to us has an obvious eternal implication, to which I will dedicate a separate entry. For now, I am interested in exploring the two more immediate benefits it brings us, both of which are conducive to everyday joyful living.
The first of these two benefits is the eradication of guilt in the life of the believer, with the joy that comes from this resulting from thankfulness and relief, and well it should: even the person who is most aggrieved over their failures to be good does not come close to comprehending the atrocity in which he has engaged. I have said before that if we were to fully understand what it is to sin against an infinitely just and holy God Who has only ever shown us heartache-inducing love, it would be enough to cause the most level-headed among us to go mad with grief.
Scripture tells us on numerous occasions that the law of God, this objective standard for what is Right and what is Wrong, is written on our hearts. Consequently, whenever we perpetually rebel against it, the law within makes us acutely aware of what we are doing. How devastating this feels depends on the sensitivity of one’s conscience; one may exist in a sort of spiritual and emotional agony until they cease the immoral behavior, while others who have managed to stifle their internal ethic–either by choosing not to ponder on it or by declaring that they have found a set of moral principles superior to those of their Creator–will experience an occasional tinge within their being that tells them they have unaligned themselves with the Highest Good. However, this is an inner pang much like a mosquito bite, in that it is an irritant one may scratch and then quickly forget about.
But no matter what, my larger point remains: the law of God is inside of every person, unquenchable, convicting, gently or ungently ushering them to repentance. And when I say unquenchable, I mean it. For some, the law within may be akin to some smoldering embers in a damp, washed-out firepit or the low, simmering flames on a stove when someone has adjusted them to a mild setting–but that does not mean the embers do not still pulsate with a bit of warmth or the low simmer of the stove would fail to make its presence known if one were to lay a hand upon it.
I am not, by the way, on a tangent. I have only spent this much time discussing God’s law in our hearts because it is critical to our larger discussion. It is this same law, in the case of the soon-to-be-believer, that induces them to such an abominable state of misery when they are rebelling against their Creator–and it is this state of misery that saps them of their mental and emotional strength, removes from them any notion that they are good, and compels them to seek deliverance from the evil of their past.
I, for one, can distinctly remember the existential horror of the year or so leading up to my decision to give my life to Jesus. I knew what I had spent my life doing. I knew most of my conscious decision-making had consisted of moral abominations and open rebellion against God. Each day, I would wake up, and a sense of dread would instantly envelop me as I felt the sins of the previous day—along with every day before that—begin eating away at me. I would try to push them down, but they stuck on me like a tattoo, and I would wish I had never woken up at all. I actually felt like my sins were wrapped around my body, like there was this dark shadow dripping with black tar constantly pulling at me with a hundred shadow-hands. I was constantly taking stock of my life—the sexual perversion, the lies, the self-serving arrogance, the selfishness—and when measured against the moral standard in my heart, I knew I was decisively guilty.
This harrowing experience led me to that fateful summer day in which I was lying down, staring at my blank ceiling, absolutely tired of trying to fight the thoughts of guilt and shame swirling around in my head. I was tired of trying to convince my conscience I was just being too hard on myself—tired of trying to convince myself I wasn’t all that bad. I could fight that battle no longer.
I submitted to God that day, asking for peace and telling Him I needed to rely on Him for everything. That was when He lifted the smothering burden of my sin off of me, and…well, I will not spend many words trying to describe it because they will fall short. I will just say I felt free. I was free.
For some, it is strange to think of misery as being one of the primary vehicles by which God delivers us to His grace, but it is only logical. He is the source of Joy and Goodness. Anything that runs in a direction opposite from Him will naturally yield the opposite of Who He is and what He offers us.
With that said, I am much less interested in describing the philosophical complexities of this process as much as I am in relaying the joyous result it brings forth. And that result is the lifting of a heavy burden: the aforementioned suffocatingly heavy burden of your sin-stained past that, if you have enough humility, eats away at you from the inside-out. It is the amelioration of the heavy gut-punch that is your guilt and shame. Freedom from the Dickensian chains you wrapped around yourself with every act of malice, each entertainment of lust, every falsehood you chose to live. The melting away of those tarry hands that each morning wrapped you in their dark embrace, pulling you back into the mistakes of your youth (or the mistakes of yesterday afternoon).
The sense of lightness this brings to the believer’s life cannot be understated; spend a few years with a seventy-pound backpack hanging from your shoulders and then see how free your footsteps feel once you unencumber yourself. Better yet, ask the sea lion how he feels once he has finally broken free from the plastic garbage he had resigned to be his watery tomb.
The stupendous freedom from the ugliness of the believers’ past, and the subsequent freedom to move forward, brings no small degree of joy into their life. This joy is augmented when one takes the time to consider how it was made possible, what with the Creator God leaving paradisal heaven on our behalf to enter into the confines of reality. When the believer takes this beautiful miracle to heart, it leads them to realize God’s endless love, as well as the high value with which He appraises their life.
All this, paired with the liberty from guilt and shame with which they are now privileged, fills their heart with a joy unlike any other, which quite naturally leads them to give thanksgiving to God, which in turn increases their joy.
That was the first of the two immediate benefits freedom from sin grants to the believer. The other is equally as conducive to cultivating holy joy, and I refer to it as the erasure of culpability. This benefit is not as tangibly felt as the first one, but once it is grasped it is just as joyous, even if it is more abstract.
King David, after committing adultery with Bathsheba and having her husband murdered, desired one thing from the Lord. In the 51st Psalm, he cries out “wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” I do not think he was merely being poetic in his language here–at least, not as much as he may appear to be. I think, and I am open to correction from my betters, that he felt his sin covering him from head to foot and he desperately wanted it off. But he, having committed the most grievous of acts by his own volition, knew he could do nothing to “scrub it away.” If the reader will allow me to use a grave analogy, his situation was much like the woman who has a man force himself on her, in that after the tragic event takes place, she desperately wants to “wash him off of her,” even if she is taking her twenty-third shower since the incident took place and she hasn’t a speck of grime anywhere on her body. I humbly ask your forgiveness if you perceive this to be a flippant comparison, but I believe it is in a similar sense that David wishes to be “washed” of his transgressions, with one key difference. Whereas the victimized woman suffers from sexual trauma, he is suffering from the trauma of his culpability.
King David is observing the devastating aftermath of his sin, perhaps in much the same way Godzilla would take in a desolated Tokyo were he ever to grow cognizant there was such a thing as property damage, and it has sunk in that the blame rests on him. He now has a great sin looming over him and no way to be rid of it–at least, not by his own ability.
I believe everyone who is honest with themselves about the nature of their sin experiences this. I know I am getting too liberal with my use of comparisons, but if the reader will allow me one more, then I will say it feels like a dark cloud constantly following you around as it floats directly overhead. It feels miserable and disgusting, and it should cause every person to approach God as David did, saying “Wash me white as snow! I cannot have this sticking to me!
I must clarify that this “cloud of culpability,” if you will, is something quite different than what we discussed previously. We discussed before how the guilt and shame from the past consumes the individual and prevents them from moving forward. Now, we are discussing the horrific sensation of culpability. If that still does not create a clear enough distinction, picture the latter as the blame itself hanging over a criminal’s head after a judge pronounces him guilty, and picture the former as the jail he must be kept in as a consequence. In my mind, both of these are two separate albeit interconnected experiences.
If the distinction is still unclear, then I am either not skilled enough a writer to accurately convey what I mean, or there truly is no meaningful difference between the two and someone with more sense has to educate me on this. Both are possible realities. For now, I will leave it at this, and we will go on assuming I have successfully established a difference between the two.
Having said that, when the reality that you and you alone are culpable for any number of disgusting sins hangs over you, it is an abominable but nonetheless necessary experience. Few things, if any, will better reveal to you the nature of your fallen state and your complete need for a savior than this ordeal. At the risk of sounding insensitive once more (forgive me, and know I do not thrive off of controversy), it is my view that many people enter into therapy or otherwise seek assurance from a close friend when they suffer from this problem. What they wish to hear, and what their confidants are usually more than willing to provide them, is some form of assurance that they are blowing this out of proportion. That they just have an overactive conscience–that they really ought not beat themselves up. After all, they are not a moral monster!
As I already stated, it is the natural instinct of both friends and counselors alike to alleviate these concerns of ethical rot by plying the anxious party in question with the exact opposite sentiment, namely, that they’ve got it all wrong and are actually rather decent. Perhaps past accolades will be recounted, so as to say “See? Would an utterly depraved person have done that?” The concerns of the confider about their depravity may even be dismissed, especially in professional counseling environments, as a “toxic” mindset. Usually, the concerned individual will take in these well-meaning encouragements, and they will walk away feeling much relieved–until the mucky feeling of culpability reveals itself to have never left at all, its fires having only been temporarily extinguished by the pep rally.
It is not obvious to me that this is the optimal scenario for these suffering individuals. I know because I was one of them, and despite the toll my fears regarding my own evil state took on my mental and emotional wellbeing, I would by no means suggest those awful effects were proof that I felt this self-disgust over nothing. I could fight it and come up with as many reasons for my innocence as I wanted, but none of them “washed me.” It was not until I, like King David, acknowledged the reality of my wickedness before anything changed. It was not until the day in which I lay on my bed, staring blankly at that blank ceiling, and said to God “All right, already! I admit it. I am not good. Not even a little. I have spent my life engaged in vice after vice, even down to the very thoughts I have dwelled on. I am in open rebellion against the source of Good Himself. Please save me from my own folly. I need you.”
When I came to this point of brokenness, God at last gave me relief. In that moment–and I truly mean in that exact moment–I felt peace. I experienced the washing for which King David petitioned God in Psalm 51. In other words, it was not until I acknowledged my depravity that it finally stopped “sticking” to me. And there was such joy in doing this. I felt like a leper who had somehow been cured of their illness. Or like I had previously been sucking in polluted air but had now taken my first step into a lush and lovely wilderness untainted by the toxins of human industry.
This erasure of culpability was the manifestation of such scriptures as Psalm 103:12, which states “as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us;” and 1 John 1:7, which says “the blood of Jesus [God’s] son cleanses us from all sin” (emphasis mine). I firmly maintain it is not like or as if Jesus has washed away the sins of the believer. From the depths of my soul, I profess He does precisely those things. And oh, what sweet relief! What blessed freedom from wretchedness and agony. My heart swells with a warm gladness that we have a God who equips us to live abundantly, no matter where we have been or what atrocities we have committed.
Because of Him, we are not defined by our sin. This ought to bring us to such pleasurable enjoyment and worship of Him that our elations spill over from us into others.
